The present invention relates to retrofitting ticket dispenser, in particular, a retrofit that converts a ticket dispenser from handling wide tickets to a dispenser that handles narrower tickets.
Amusement devices, such as skee ball games, are often equipped with ticket dispensers for issuing tickets as representative of prizes upon scoring a bullseye or a high score. The tickets are redeemed at the amusement center for prizes. The standard ticket dispenser in the industry is designed for use with wide tickets that are made available in fan-folded packages. In particular, the industry standard ticket dispenser is Model No: DL-1275 sold by Deltronic Labs, Inc., of Chalfont, Pa. A standard fan-folded ticket is 2" long and 11/8" wide. The fan-folded package of tickets is more expensive than a coiled roll of tickets. Unfortunately, the machinery for making rolls of tickets is standardized to produce narrower tickets. The standard roll of tickets provides tickets that are 2" long and 1" wide. While the difference in sizes may not be dramatic, it is enough to cause problems if the narrower tickets are substituted for the wide tickets in the dispenser. Moreover, the difference in cost between the two tickets can run into the tens of thousands of dollars for companies that own and operate a large number of amusement centers that use these ticket dispensers.
Both the narrower and the wide tickets are notched at the edges of the intersection between adjacent tickets. The notches are used by the ticket dispenser which has an optical sensor along the edge of the tickets which senses the notch so that it can count the number of tickets that are being dispensed. In this manner a specified number of tickets are dispensed in accordance with the number of tickets that have been won in the associated amusement device.
Because of the large savings in cost in going from the wide fan-folded tickets to the narrower roll of tickets, there has been a long established need in the amusement industry to make the standard ticket dispensers useful with the narrower tickets. As it stands, if the narrower tickets are substituted for the wide tickets, a player at the amusement device receiving the tickets may wiggle the narrow ticket back and forth in the wider track provided by the standard ticket dispenser. In this manner the optical sensor along the edge of the ticket dispenser may be thrown off in its count of the number of tickets being dispensed. Perhaps even more importantly, by wiggling the tickets back and forth there may be a tendency for the tickets to jam in the machine. It is therefore highly desirable in the industry to provide a ticket dispenser that is suitable for the narrower roll of tickets and to provide such a dispenser at as minimal a cost as possible.